


above us, only sky

by stammiviktor



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (...eventually), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Crowley And Aziraphale Use Their Words For Once, Dialogue Heavy, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Some violent imagery, a brief mention of homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor/pseuds/stammiviktor
Summary: The worst part of Armageddon, Crowley estimates, won’t actually be the boiled dolphins. No, it’s theafter.It’s the War.“You know what will happen,” Aziraphale says in a very small voice.“…It doesn’t really bear thinking about.”





	above us, only sky

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in 36 hours i'm still not sure what's happened to me
> 
> (title from john lennon's "imagine")

“He’s _ too normal,” _Crowley hisses as he takes his seat, voice just barely audible over the drone of a hundred musicians warming up on stage. One of the violas is flat. Now there’s a fun idea he hasn’t tried yet—cursing an instrument to be always out of tune. A couple hundred concert-goers, currently milling about as they find their seats, would have their nights ruined by mild yet grating annoyance.

“So we’ve discussed,” Aziraphale replies, not looking away from the stage. He’s wearing a bowtie that Crowley hasn’t seen since the nineties. “A year or so ago, I believe.”

Crowley bristles in his seat. “Not even an inkling of demonic power. Not a_ single _supernatural shenanigan. It’s weird.”

“He stole ten pounds out of his father’s wallet yesterday.”

“He told me. I’m sure you scolded him for it?”

“Oh, thoroughly.” Aziraphale grins and looks at Crowley out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sure you told him, ‘jolly good job, make it a hundred next time’?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“It’s not very demonic, though,” Aziraphale concedes. “You’re right, not at _ all _ supernatural. Just a normal spot of rebellion.”

A note from a flute clashes horribly with one from an oboe. Crowley winces. He’s not even sure what they’re here to see—Berlioz’s something or other. Not one of the popular ones, or he’d have heard Aziraphale talking about it. They really just tend to rendezvous at whatever weeknight cultural event they can find in the city and whisper under their breaths until the show starts, continuing to pretend that work is the Only Reason they are here; they certainly aren’t enjoying a night out on the town in each other’s company, not one bit.

The mood is a bit more somber tonight than usual, though. Crowley crosses his arms. “Suppose it doesn’t bear worrying about, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“We’re doing all we can. Going the extra mile ‘n all that already.”

“Right,” Aziraphale says, very quietly. He’s suddenly quite preoccupied with straightening his bowtie. 

The first chair violin strikes up a note and the orchestra begins to tune. The flat viola overcorrects, swinging sharp, before settling on the right pitch, but Crowley doesn’t feel any measure of relief at the resolution.

At intermission, Aziraphale glances over and says, “He was a funny fellow.”

“Who?”

“Hector, of course.”

“Berlioz? I didn’t know you knew him.”

“Not very well. I met him once, ‘47, maybe? Or ‘48.” Aziraphale waves a hand. “You were sleeping.”

Crowley had started off the nineteenth century convinced he was in for a near-repeat of the fourteenth, and with the added fear of persecution from Hell’s higher ups niggling away in his brain he made the executive decision to just skip most of it over. He regrets it, sometimes, when he hears Aziraphale talk about Romanticism and the gavotte with that wistful smile on his face.

“Would you care to join me for a nightcap after this is over?” Aziraphale asks, no longer whispering.

Crowley starts. “Uh, sure, I— could use a drink. Yeah. Sure. _ Chez vous?” _

“My place would be best, yes, I have a lovely bottle of vintage port I’ve been wanting to open. That is, unless you had other plans...”

“No!” Crowley says a little too enthusiastically. “That’d be great. Love a good port.”

As they settle back in for the second half, the man on the other side of Aziraphale gives Crowley a wink and a thumbs up, as if to say _ good going, chap, go get ‘em. _

—

As per the usual, an hour later finds Crowley and Aziraphale piss drunk in the back room of the Soho bookshop. They’ve moved on from the port to a cloyingly sweet moscato that they can only stomach because of their already-high blood-alcohol contents, or whatever it is that changes in celestial beings’ corporeal forms when they imbibe large quantities of alcoholic gross matter.

“I’m just_ saying,” _Aziraphale says between hiccups, “that… well, he’s just a…”

“Insufferable bastard that doesn’ deserve a kid?”

“Right.” Aziraphale blinks and catches himself. “I mean, well, I… You said it, not me.”

_ “Ballet is for girls,” _ Crowley imitates in an American accent with a severely wandering vocal range. _ “No Y-chromosomed male child of mine will be caught dead in a le—lea—leotard...” _

“Oh, that was quite a good impression,” Aziraphale says. Crowley is absolutely delighted and not nearly sober enough to try to hide it.

“Y’think so?”

“Oh yes, spot-on.”

“Thanks, angel.” He reclines on the couch, stretching his arm over the back and feeling quite proud of himself. 

“Maybe we should get him a tape of the Bolshoi’s performance of _ Swan Lake _ last season,” Aziraphale muses. “Oh, you can pop it in the television in his bedroom! Once he sees the way they _ move, _ so powerful and majestic…”

“Doubt that’ll work,” Crowley grumbles, waving a hand in the air and wondering, as he often does, if Aziraphale doesn’t get tired of always assuming the best of people. “Doesn’t seem the type to change his mind all… willy-nilly. ‘Sides, he’s going back to Washington for the month.”

A shadow crosses Aziraphale’s face. “Right. Young Warlock seemed quite upset about that when he found out.”

“The bastard’s missing his seventh birthday!”

“It is quite unacceptable.”

“Maybe _ we’ll _get him a leotard! Or, or, or—I’ll get the leotard, you get the pointy shoes.”

“Those are for the female dancers, I believe.”

“Not sure why that matters.”

Aziraphale laughs. It’s a bright sound, like the tinkling of the bell over his shop door. “His father would _ certainly _have a conniption,” he purrs. “His mother probably wouldn’t mind either way.”

_“Con-nip-tion,” _ Crowley tries out on his tongue. Funny word. He shrugs and turns back to the matter at hand. “I say, if he wants to dance, let him dance. Maybe with a li’l bit of _ demonic _ intervention…”

“We’re supposed to be influencing him _ away _ from his demonic heritage, if you recall. Godfathers, remember?”

“God-nanny and God-gardener.” _ Sitting in a tree, _ Warlock’s petulant voice continues in the back of his head. Nanny let Brother Francis give her a flower from the garden _ one _time—

_ (K-I-S-S-I-N— _

_ Shut it, kid, _ Crowley grumbles to himself.)

Aziraphale nods and downs the rest of his moscato. His nose wrinkles in displeasure. “Right. You’re supposed to be making my job easier, not harder!”

“Ah, what’s a little friendly competition?”

“It’s not_ friendly competition, _Crowley! This is the end of the world we’re talking about!”

Crowley tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear and makes an effort to slouch as casually as possible. “Mm. Yeah.” He burps.

“The _ End _ of it!” Aziraphale insists, his eyes suddenly all watery in that way that Crowley can barely stand to look at. Then, quieter, he reiterates, “The start of the War…”

_“Fuck _ the War,” Crowley says automatically, lurching forward suddenly enough that he pitches slightly off balance and sways where he sits. He misses the ‘60s sometimes. The 1960s, that is. Feels like yesterday, with so many people so riled up, those John Lennon glasses, bell-bottom jeans. Tie-dye was a bitch though, and to this day he regrets not trying to take credit for it back in Hell, but he simply couldn’t think of a credible enough reason why it would be so demonic other than “the Principality Aziraphale truly despises it”, which he had no reason to know. _ Fuck the War, _ he thinks again, privately, to himself.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees. It’s the closest the angel has ever come to actually saying the word _ fuck _ in Crowley’s six-thousand year memory.

“Poor manatees,” Crowley laments, à propos of virtually nothing. 

Aziraphale frowns. The low lighting casts weird shadows on his face. “Last time it was dolphins.”

“Dolphins too.” Crowley nods rather miserably. “But I had to teach the kid about manatees last week. Stupid lookin’ buggers, manatees. Like big… potatoes. Sea potatoes. Still, don’t want ‘em to drown in blood. Or boil. ...Like potatoes.”

Aziraphale looks down at his empty wine glass and fidgets with the stem. He glances to the half-full bottle on the table next to him, probably wanting the comfort of having something to sip at for a conversation like this, but doesn’t end up pouring more.

“You care an awful lot about the creatures of the sea,” he says.

“I care an awful lot about a lot these days, apparently,” Crowley mumbles, then jolts. He waves his hand. “Did I say that ou’ loud? Ignore it, angel.”

The angel offers him a terribly sad smile. Crowley downs the remaining half-glass of wine in one gulp; it tastes like a liquified and fermented lollipop. Desperate times call for desperate measures, though, because he’s not yet nearly drunk enough to deal with this conversation that seems to still be happening despite his best attempts to steer it off course. 

“Seems we’re ignoring a lot these days,” Aziraphale says, the words dripping in subtext, and Crowley—or rather, Nanny Ashtoreth, who has been steadfastly and somewhat unsuccessfully ignoring accusations of her alleged feelings for Brother Francis these past few years—panics. 

“Not ignoring anything, why’d y’think that? Nothing to ignore, nope.”

“Mm.” Aziraphale nods like he understands. “Yes, nothing like ignoring impending doom.”

Oh. Right. 

“It’ll work, angel.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“It will.”

“It very well might not.”

Crowley feels quite horrid, like his insides are filling with liquid dread. He grabs blindly for a metaphorical bucket to bail it out. “Like I said. Doesn’t really bear thinking about.”

“I think about it a lot,” Aziraphale admits instead of changing the subject like a sensible person would. He suddenly sounds very sober, even though the bottles of alcohol haven’t been miraculously refilled yet. Come to think of it, though, Crowley feels quite sober all of a sudden as well.

He swallows and crosses his arms over his chest, wishing he had his sunglasses. He put them on a stack of books when he came inside and he’s probably never going to remember which. He bristles. 

“Poor manatees—”

“It’s not about the _ blasted _ manatees, Crowley!”

“I thought you cared equally for all of God’s creatures,” the demon slurs, leaning forward and cocking his head to the side in a challenge.

“I just—”

“All creatures of the land and of the sea and everything that _ creeeeeps _upon the ground—”

“For Heaven’s sake, Crowley, I care about _ you!” _

_ There, _ Crowley thinks, enjoying a smug moment of satisfaction at getting a rise out of the angel, before the actual words and their _ actual _ meaning dawn on him. He reels, feeling suddenly quite dizzy, and decides to sober up for real this time. The bottle on the table refills; sometimes he wonders if it tastes like backwash, or at least as metallic as the aftertaste in his mouth, but right now is certainly not the time to test that theory. Aziraphale screws up his face and follows his lead until both of the bottles are full.

The air between them is stiff. Stale. Crowley, cold-blooded as he is, feels quite chilled without the pleasant warmth of the alcohol in his system. Aziraphale is sitting in the antique chair across from him and looking him dead in the eyes. He’s always been brave like that. Braver than Crowley, who is two seconds away from pulling out of this conversation to go retrieve a spare pair of glasses from the glove compartment in his Bentley. He’d return with his guard up, wave his hand, and say, _ So, you were saying you care about me, angel? Me, specifically, over everything else in all of Creation? Do continue. _

Crowley runs a tired hand over his tired face. “Oh, I’ll be alright, angel. You will, too, even if you have to listen to ‘My Favorite Things’ on repeat for all of eternity.”

The truth—that neither of them will be particularly alright at all having been separated from each other for the rest of eternity—is left unsaid like always. They both know it. They both know the other knows it. Why break tradition now?

Aziraphale, having retired his wine glass to the table next to him, clenches his empty hands into fists over his knees. “You know what will happen,” he says in a very small voice. He’s not looking at Crowley anymore. Maybe even Aziraphale’s bravery can run out when it comes to things like this.

Crowley is beginning to feel like a broken record. “...It doesn’t really bear thinking about,” he dismisses weakly. _ Can’t _ bear thinking about, more like; or, more specifically, _ he _can’t bear it.

Aziraphale takes a deep, bracing breath and looks up to meet the demon’s eyes. “Crowley, my dear, if it comes to it—”

“No.”

That’s all Crowley says. _ No. _ He stops that line of thinking in its tracks. He doesn’t want that sentence finished, doesn’t want to come within a hundred-mile radius of how that proposition was going to end. 

“We must at least _ consider _ this outcome!”

Crowley has done a very good job over the past seven years, since he was handed a baby-sized basket, of not considering this outcome. He’d made rather a point of it, actually. 

So he says, wryly, “Good thing you gave away your sword, I suppose.”

Aziraphale fumes. That little halo of light around his head that humans can’t see glows bright enough to burn Crowley’s eyes. “This is not a joke!”

“Can’t very well fight without a sword,” Crowley mumbles.

“Dammit, Crowley, they’ll give me a new sword!” 

“Maybe we won’t have to fight. Maybe we’ll get stationed in… communications, or something. Never was a very good fighter, me. And you, you won’t even kill _ Sister Slug _when she has your favorite flowers for lunch!”

“It’s the War to End Everything!” Aziraphale exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. “Regardless of our abilities I would _ assume _ it would be a rather ‘all-hands-on-deck’ kind of situation! Why can’t you just give this one _ iota of thought—” _

“Because,” Crowley grinds out, his entire body tensed to flee if Aziraphale pushes him further, “I know you’re inordinately fond of this rug and I’m sure you’d rather I not vomit all over it, thank you very much.”

“I don’t think these bodies can…” Aziraphale waves a hand.

“Vomit? Oh, they can, I’ll promise you that.” He’d drank four full jars of wine at the wedding in Cana, made a whole weekend out of it—there’d been much more to drink than was expected and of rather good quality, too, and he just wanted to know how much he could physically imbibe. The answer: a lot. Much more than a human, but with virtually the same consequences, which were very complicated (read: near impossible) to demonic-miracle away once they’d taken effect the next morning

Aziraphale pales. “Ah. Great.”

“And I might. If we keep talking about this. Sayonara to your carpet.”

“Right.” Aziraphale has that rigid look on his face, like he is schooling his expression very, very carefully. “Well, if you’re going to be difficult, then we won’t talk about it at all."

Crowley nods and relaxes into the antique couch once again. “Fantastic. Now, pour me the wine again? I want to see what it tastes like. It’s moscato, can’t be much worse than the first time around.”

—

Almost exactly four years later, Crowley is drunk again, this time on a bender to rival the wedding in Cana some two millennia ago. He’s drinking whiskey, because it seems like exactly the kind of thing a person in his situation in this kind of bar would try to drown himself with.

There’s a little folded up piece of paper in his pocket, with a glossy picture in the center and ALPHA CENTAURI written in a neat font just below. He lets it languish in his pocket; it doesn’t hold much appeal anymore at all.

_I won’t even THINK_ _of you— _Yeah. Right. Crowley’s not actually sure he’ll ever think of anything else ever again, and considering how many things there are to think about with the end of the world only hours away, that’s a pretty impressive feat. 

It’s been a while since Crowley has faced grief. Other people’s sure, he sees that all the time, it’s inevitable in his line of work and in life on this planet in general. You get used to it after a while. De- _ Desensitized _might be the word, though if Crowley tries to say it out loud right now he’ll mix up all the syllables and accidentally bite one of the tips of his tongue. 

He feels like one of those wailing widows, maybe. Probably. He doesn’t actually know. His grief is so far beyond wailing, or perhaps just suffocating enough that he couldn’t wail if he tried. He tips another glass of whiskey down his throat. The bartender’s threatening to cut him off soon, but if that happens Crowley will just miracle himself some more from a bottle on the top shelf. He won’t feel guilty about it, either, because it’s not like anyone’s going to live long enough to see the next paycycle. 

Crowley might have felt like this when he Fell. Or rather, when it hit him all of a sudden that he’d managed to Fall somehow without really knowing when or why, but _ knowing _ it had happened because the light he’d once treasured, that Grace that had filled him from head to toe and given him life and love and _ purpose, _ had just… flickered and gone out like a shitty lightbulb. He’d wailed then, probably, or done some celestial equivalent thereof. He doesn’t remember much except the stench of sulphur and feeling so cold and alone that he was convinced he had died.

Anyway, Crowley’s in a bar, fully prepared to literally drink until the end of the world, and he’s truly grieving for the first time in over a half-dozen millennia, swimming in unbearable loss and top-shelf whiskey. He’s also about to realize that grief comes in a lot of very strange flavors. 

Notably, in his case, relief.

The War will come. At this point, it’s just a matter of waiting around for it to happen. He doesn’t know if he’ll be made to fight or if he’ll be speedily executed for his treason once Hell gets ahold of him, but like Aziraphale once said, the End Times are probably an ‘all-hands-on-deck type of situation’. So maybe they will let him live long enough to die in battle, or else execute him afterward on the off chance Hell actually comes out on top.

The very faint silver lining of this whole Aziraphale-dying thing is this: now, if Crowley is made to fight in the War like he always assumed he would be,_ he won’t have anything to lose. _ He won’t ever have to face the unthinkable possibility that has haunted him for the past decade, because the unthinkable has already been done for him.

It’s probably the most twisted silver lining he’s ever heard, but Armageddon’s like that, he supposes.

And then, miracle of all miracles! There’s a clap of thunder, a faint shimmer in the air in front of him, and this time it’s _ real _ relief that he feels. It shoots through his body like lightning and he suddenly has a great deal to lose once again.

“Did you go to Alpha Centauri?” Aziraphale’s apparition asks.

“Nah, changed my mind,” Crowley croaks. “Stuff happened. I lost my best friend.”

Aziraphale’s shimmering face crumples. Even like this, his eyes express _ everything. _ “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Crowley’s world is turning again, now that it has its axis back in place, but they are still only hours out from the end of everything and he’s already begun to mentally prepare himself for the worst. He is quite sure, suddenly, that he’ll have to stab himself through with a flaming sword the second the War starts; it’s far preferable to having to again face the prospect of a world without Aziraphale—or, worse, a world where he could be the one forced to bring that about. 

—

Demons don’t sleep the same way that angels don’t dance—that is to say, where there is a rule regarding celestial beings, Aziraphale and Crowley are the exceptions. Crowley sleeps rather like a bear, for long periods of time at spaced-out intervals, either when there’s nothing better to do (read: Aziraphale is busy elsewhere) or if there’s something he’d quite like to skip over. He also sleeps after great periods of prolonged mental stress, like at the end of the fourteenth century. 

By the time the whole Almost-Apocalypse fiasco blows over, Crowley’s long due for a nap. He passes out on Aziraphale’s bed (which usually houses stacks of books the angel has whisked away from the shop when he noticed any customer taking particular interest in them) and sleeps for a solid two weeks.

Demons also don’t dream, and here again Crowley is the exception. Except he never dreams in the fun way, the kind where you can fly or you meet your favorite celebrity or you _ meet _ (wink, wink) your favorite celebrity. No, Crowley either has peaceful, restful, dreamless sleep, or a nightmare so horrifying it forces his body awake.

Crowley sleeps for two weeks in Aziraphale’s bedroom, but it should have been three.

At his feet is Aziraphale. It’s the first thing he notices—the angel is _ always _ the first thing he notices, in dreams or real life. The second thing he notices is the angle of the angel’s wings, snapped at the bone, hanging limp and coated in celestial blood. He bleeds light from his mouth, his forehead, his forearms. He’s lying helpless on the ground, the flaming sword held limply in his twitching hand.

The angel’s many eyes are glazed over with fear, and in them Crowley sees the reflection of himself looming tall with spheres of eager Hellfire burning in his palms. 

Behind Crowley are Beelzebub, Hastur, Ligur, Dagon, others he can’t even name, looking to him expectantly. Behind Aziraphale is nobody. Around all of them is a battlefield, the fighting long over everywhere but here, the fields littered with celestial corpses. He recognizes some of them from before the Fall. They’d been his brothers and sisters once.

And Aziraphale, _ Aziraphale… _Well, he’s always been far more than that, hasn’t he?

The angel opens his bleeding mouth and offers a shaky smile. 

“Go ahead, my dear,” Aziraphale croaks. “Don’t you know? It only ever could have ended this way.”

Crowley lunges forward, seizes the flaming sword, turns it on his own stomach and _ plunges— _

—back into the land of the living. He flies straight up off the bed, gasping, choking, shaking so hard he might fall apart. He vomits off the side of the bed but there is nothing at all in his hibernating body’s stomach, so he just convulses, wretches, screws his eyes shut against the crystal-clear image of his angel bleeding and awaiting murder at Crowley’s hand. But closing his eyes doesn’t make the image go away, nor can it dull the slicing horror that has cut through every muscle and nerve of his corporeal form. He dry-heaves again.

On the bedside table on top of a stack of books is a coaster with a glass of water. There are still ice cubes floating around in it, as if Aziraphale has been changing it out frequently just in case Crowley woke up. His body doesn’t need water, but it helps, even if his hand shakes the whole way from the coaster to his mouth and back again. 

“Angel?” he rasps, much quieter than he intended. Still, he hears someone stirring and the patter of feet on the staircase. 

“Oh good, you’re awake!” Aziraphale exclaims from the doorway. “You were starting to get dusty, darling.” The moment he sees the look on Crowley’s face, the excitement disappears. His eyes blow wide. “Oh, my goodness.”

Crowley suddenly wishes he had his sunglasses. He’s still blinking blearily around Aziraphale’s bedroom; everything is blurry and he wants to hide. He tries to say something casual but immediately chokes on it. 

Aziraphale dashes to his side immediately and takes his hand.

“Did something— did something happen?”

“Not really.” It’s not _ real. _

(Feels real, though, inside. The way he’s all twisted up and feels like he maybe really _ did _ stab himself through with a flaming sword; the way he’s having trouble breathing and remembering that he doesn’t actually need to breathe; the way he thinks he might wretch again and again or that his hands will never stop shaking.)

Aziraphale looks just as shattered as he feels. “Don’t lie to me, please. I can’t take it.”

“A dream,” Crowley chokes out. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Darling, you’re panicking.”

“Am I?” The world spins with Aziraphale as the focal point. He thinks, somewhere in the back of his mind, _ I’d do anything in all of Creation, anything, except hurt you. _ His eyes keep scanning the blurry room almost of their own accord, searching for a way out only for him to remember belatedly that they’re safe.Still, the door looks oh-so-tempting. He imagines Hellfire in his hands, Aziraphale crumpled at his feet, imagines the bookshop and this apartment engulfed in flames, and thinks they’d both be better off if he were somewhere else entirely. He’d try to leave if he thought he was capable of keeping his balance when he stands up.

Aziraphale circles to the other side of the bed. The antique frame creaks as he sits down carefully next to Crowley, leaning back against the headboard. He pulls Crowley toward him, cradling his head in his hands. 

“Talk to me, darling. I can’t bear to see you like this.”

Aziraphale’s hands are soft and uncalloused against Crowley’s cheek. They haven’t held a sword in millennia. 

“I won’t fight you,” Crowley whispers, more to himself than anyone else.

“What? I don’t want to fight either, my dear, it’s only been a few weeks since the last one and it took a lot out of me. I promise, by the way, I really don’t mind where you’ve put your house plants, by the Bible collection is as good a place as any and they are important to you so they are important to _ me—” _

“No,” Crowley rasps, his breath catching as Aziraphale trails his thumb tenderly down his jaw. “I mean. War. _ The _ War. If it— _ when _ it comes—”

“It won’t.”

A laugh rips itself from Crowley’s throat so violently it almost hurts. “You don’t know that. Ineffability, remember?”

“Well, it could very well have ineffably passed us by entirely.”

“And if it didn’t—” Crowley forces himself to sit up, to look the angel straight in the eyes instead of melting into his touch and his welcoming lap. He fixes his serpentine eyes on Aziraphale and says, “If it doesn’t. Angel. I’ll need… I’ll need more.”

“More,” Aziraphale deadpans.

“I used it all. On Saturday, or a few Saturdays ago, you know the one. Poured it all on Ligur… Oh, you know, maybe Adam put it back in my safe...”

Aziraphale has gone very still beneath him. When he speaks, the words crack around the edges. “You aren’t talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

“Holy Water,” Crowley confirms. Might as well call a spade a spade.

_“Crowley!” _

“I need—”

“Crowley,_ no!” _Aziraphale wrenches back, his eyes blown wide with horror. “Why would you— how could you— We’re on our own side, remember? Us against the world?”

Crowley blinks. “...Oh,” he says rather pathetically. In his panicked delirium, he had indeed forgotten about that bit, or briefly let it slip his mind. In his defense, a lot has happened. “Right.”

There are hands on either side of Crowley’s neck cupping his head firmly, holding him tight and making eye-contact non-negotiable. Aziraphale is always so warm; even now, Crowley sinks into his touch.

“You aren’t doing that. The fighting, the Holy Water, none of it. We don’t _ belong _ to them anymore, Crowley! They cannot make us hurt one another.”

Crowley tries to scoff but it comes out sounding like a squeak. “Funny word, _ can’t. _ Demons laugh in the face of can’t. Angels, too. And God, oh, especially God.”

Aziraphale lets one hand trail down Crowley’s neck, over his chest, down his side to settle on his bony hip. The other caresses Crowley’s face in a way that drains every ounce of tension from his muscles. It’s hard to be afraid when you are quite literally in the arms of an angel like Aziraphale. 

“Darling,” he sighs, “I’ve held onto this fear for just as long as you have. Longer, maybe.”

“Longer? No way.”

The angel nods. “I spent that first millennia or so on Earth quite terrified that Heaven would order me to smite you instead of wasting my efforts with… well…”

“Thwarting me?”

“Yes. Luckily, there’s a bit of a… policy, straight from the highest of authorities, about allowing evil to exist and whatnot. Otherwise…”

“I never feared you,” Crowley admits, suddenly feeling quite strong in the midst of all this skin-flaying vulnerability. “I didn’t, no matter how much smiting there was going on from your colleagues.”

“I never feared you either.” Aziraphale caresses Crowley’s brow and smiles in that way that lights up his eyes. “What was there to fear?”

And with that, sitting upright quickly loses out to slumping forward in Aziraphale’s arms, draped over his lap with his head on the angel’s shoulder. It smells lovely, like that new cologne and Aziraphale’s radiating Grace. He bathes himself in it, breathes it in, wraps himself up and lets the angel keep him warm. 

“‘M a demon, though. Quite fearsome,” he mutters. “Patron Demon of Mild Inconveniences.”

“Terrifying,” Aziraphale teases, brushing a lock of hair from Crowley’s forehead. He sobers quickly. “It really was terrifying, in other ways, though. It’s horrible, loving someone you know no one else would ever try to protect. _ Knowing _ that you could be the reason that he…”

“How do you think I felt, when you got yourself into mortal danger at least once a century—over food and literature of all things!” Crowley deflects. It must be quite obvious when he does that, especially when he doesn’t have his glasses to cover him up. Maybe he has a tell, or maybe it’s just that Aziraphale has known him for approximately as long as the Earth has existed and has loved him longer than he’s loved books or food of any kind. 

“Darling,” Aziraphale whispers. “Darling, can you imagine how I felt when you asked me all those years ago for Holy Water? Can you imagine how it felt to _ hand it _ to you, knowing what it could do, what you might…”

“No,” Crowley admits. “But I can imagine.” He thinks it would be rather like seeing Aziraphale, broken and bleeding, looking up at him from his feet and saying, _ Go ahead, darling… _

He twitches in Aziraphale’s arms at the phantom memory. He breathes in, breathes out, and does his best to banish that image that he fears might stay with him forever.

“I’m terrified of losing you,” Crowley says, but that doesn’t seem to quite cut it does it? He modifies, “I’m terrified of _ hurting _you.” Terrified we won’t be allowed this, that the cards are stacked against us by a Dealer who won’t show Her hand, that the difference between you and I, angel and demon, divine and unforgivable, blessed and cursed, is far too great for us to ever be allowed peace. 

Crowley does not say all of this out loud, but still, Aziraphale replies, “I know.” He holds Crowley tight to his chest and runs his fingers through his hair, the most tender thing Crowley has ever experienced. It sends a shiver down his spine. “I am, too.”

“What do we… what do we do?”

Aziraphale shrugs, Crowley’s head moving up and down with his shoulder. “Enjoy every moment, I suppose. Check out that cottage on the South Downs you found posted. Go to… to China, and try live crickets! I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Crowley lifts his head off of Aziraphale’s shoulder for just a moment to make sure the angel sees his incredulously raised eyebrow. “Crickets?”

“It’s a novelty,” Aziraphale replies with a humoring smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you try it.”

“Mm.” Crowley lays his head back down and relaxes even more. “Alright, then.” 

Silence engulfs them for a moment. Crowley notices for the first time the sounds of the nightlife on the Soho street below, muffled voices and car engines and car horns, a bit of a ways off. 

“I suppose we just… trust,” Aziraphale continues. “That even if the worst happens, we will face it together, side by side. And _ without _Holy Water.”

“No Holy Water,” Crowley concedes.

“And if we can’t stand up and fight, well, I hear Alpha Centauri is only getting lovelier by the century.”

Crowley sucks in a breath and pulls upward to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. “Really?”

“Really.”

Crowley hums contentedly.

“For the record, angel,” he says sometime later, “even back before—back when we still thought Warlock was the Spawn of Satan and before this whole mess happened, back when we still had deniability, I’d…” He clears his throat. “I don’t think I could have ever raised a weapon to you. I wouldn’t have done it. Couldn’t’ve.”

He’s not sure who initiates the contact, but in that moment their hands meet, fingers intertwining. 

“I wouldn’t have, either, I am certain of that,” Aziraphale replies in a voice as soft as the skin of his palms. “I wouldn’t have even picked up the sword, Heaven be damned. Not against you. Never.”

“Never,” Crowley agrees, getting a bit choked up. The room is blurry again but for a new reason. The unnamed emotion swelling in Crowley’s chest and the water in his eyes are too much for him to process, so he deflects once again. “Well, it’s not like you were much help in the First War, Mr. ‘I’ve Never Actually Killed Anyone And I Gave Away My Only Weapon’.”

“Hm. Maybe they really would have put me in communications. Gabriel certainly would have been convinced I’d be useless, at least unless I, well, ‘lost the gut’.”

Crowley blinks. “Wait you just— you just air-quoted. Those were air quotes. Did he _ say _ that?!”

“Maybe once. Or twice. Just in passing!”

“I’ll kill him.”

“That’s nice, dear, but it’s quite alright.”

“He could use a good maiming at least, the pompous bastard.”

“I thought we were trying to avoid a war with Heaven.”

“...A Mild Inconvenience, then?”

“Alright,” Aziraphale agrees easily. He presses a sweet kiss to the back of Crowley’s hand and Crowley’s face gets suddenly very hot. “Just don’t get caught.”

(A few weeks later, Gabriel will go to his favorite tailor to pick up the suit he had ordered only to find them permanently closed with a hastily-scribbled note tacked to the door. The tailor, who will have recently come into a large sum of money in the lotto, will have just moved to Aruba without so much as packing his safety pins. Furious, Gabriel will decide to go for a jog through the park to blow off steam, only to find his usual route overrun with power-walking baby boomers and chattery young mothers with strollers, all of whom seem to want to stop and talk to him and move at a maximum of five miles per hour. When Crowley tells Aziraphale this, he will grin like a kid on Christmas morning, or, more accurately, simply the petty bastard Crowley has always known him to be.)

But that is later. At present, thanks to Aziraphale’s insistence upon seeing the way his eyelids have begun to droop, Crowley goes back to sleep for a few days to actually get some rest this time. When he wakes up, he finds Aziraphale exactly where he was when he fell asleep—wrapped around Crowley from behind, arm slung over his waist, wide awake and perfectly willing to spend another seventy-two hours in the same position, if needed, to lend his body heat and comfort to the demon in his arms.

“You’re alright?” he asks, brushing the hair from Crowley’s bleary eyes.

“Yup,” Crowley yawns. “Dreamless. ‘M craving waffles. Up for a trip to Belgium?”

Judging from the darkness behind the curtains, it is currently nighttime, but Aziraphale brightens like the morning sun. “Oh! The kind with the little pearls of sugar that caramelize on the outside?”

“Of course, what do you take me for, a demon?”

“Brilliant, I’ll— I’ll pack some things, while you get dressed. Are you sure you don’t…?”

“I’m fine, angel,” Crowley replies, and he means it. Without his glasses, he knows Aziraphale can see the honesty in his eyes.

“Good,” the angel replies, squeezing Crowley’s hands meaningfully. “Let’s get going, then. Together.”

Crowley smiles.

“Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think <3 
> 
> find me on tumblr at [stammiviktor](https://stammiviktor.tumblr.com/)!


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